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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Here's a background on my most favored author that most people do not know. Anyone who read his books and watched the movies not knowing its history would not do it justice. So I have taken the liberty of posting it here for anyone interested.

I have always been a big fan of J.R.R.Tolkien's novels but not until today did I find out what made his stories so mind boggling. If I were to write a paper praising his profound ideas and intentions I could write books on it. It was rare to see someone embedded with what I would consider true Christian values whether I believed in them or not, and even though many might not agree with the fact that his stories proved to be the best, no one could deny that they were and still are the most original and most creative works of all time, because that is what they are.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of ancient languages and mythology in Oxford University. He started writing his first novel 'The Hobbit' at around 1925 with his first lines 'In a hole in the ground there lives a hobbit'. Little did he know that that was going to be the start of a long journey to the trilogy of 'Lord of the Rings' and the most favored fantasy novel to many.

I first read 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' when I was 11 years old. My brother introduced them to me as being his favorite books and as a younger sister who grew accustomed to copying him, I of course aimed to read them too. That was the first inspiration I received to becoming an author myself. My goals however similar were still completely different, and only recently did I find out how different they were. The dreams I had of creating a fantasy world of my own were mere artistic and inventive hopes of an artist who would do it for pleasure and self-satisfaction. The world Tolkien created was made to become a practiced culture that England would take as a base for English Mythology and Literature. He wanted to give England and the English language a rich history because he was disappointed that English back then had no substance or long background or real culture for that matter. It used to be a primitive language spoken by the commoner where French used to be the prestigious one before the rise of the Shakespearean era.

Tolkien did not create a mere story. He created history, and culture that was supposed to have happened at a given point of a given time. For that was the way his books were written. They were written chronologically as historical documents. The stories of Middle-Earth were supposed to have happened during the pagan pre-Christian age that had long been forgotten by mankind. And all that was made believable despite the surreal elements added to it. 'The Hobbit' and the 'Lord of the Rings' are fantasy stories. They did not happen in the past, but the fundamental ideas of them did. Just as the fundamental ideas of Greek Mythologies such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid and every other myth told before that were believed to be true.

That is because the general stories and wars did happen. We are sitting here today because our forefathers fought and risked their lives for the lives we now live. That was the allegory and essence of the history of Middle-Earth. That is what fascinated me even more. I was not reading the works of a mere fantasy but the very heart of a pagan, heroic humanity.

The difference in cultures and art of each ethnic background he created. The languages were real languages he invented from scratch, they were not mere gibberish.

To think that such a world and all its details could be created and brought together by one man which naturally would have taken civilizations to develop, reflected J.R.R.Tolkien's brilliance.

I am now convinced that the idol I chose to follow was better than I could have hoped for.

Even though my goals differ in matter and in manner, and whatever I chose to create would never hold anything to Tolkien's historical legends, I nevertheless hope to make my stories as authentic as he had made his.

I am also glad I got the chance to base my Batchelor's project on his works. This post was written as a result of that. lol.